Amb. Susan Rice – her background speaks volumes when it comes to Benghazi

The ongoing problem with the Obama Administration is its choice of foot soldiers and Kool-Aid drinking ideologues for key positions, rather than its selection of people who question, have differing views and can raise the level of debate when it comes to policy issues and events affecting the lives of Americans.

Susan Rice in her 'you've got to believe me' pose

Susan Rice met with Senators John McCain, Lindsay Graham, and Kelly Ayotte today to discuss her remarks as White House spokesperson for the Benghazi attack on the five Sunday morning political talk shows. After the meeting, while all three senators expressed “significantly troubled,” “more disturbed now,” and “more troubled today,” one only has to look more closely at Susan Rice’s background to understand her judgment and how she came to make those remarks. How the Ambassador can possibly be considered for Secretary of State is quite troubling given her background and history as a public servant [emphasis mine].

In 1993 she joined the administration of President Clinton, serving at the National Security Council. She held various positions, including director for International Organizations and Peacekeeping, special assistant to the president and senior director for African Affairs.

She was a policy adviser during the genocide in Rwanda and also at a time when the Clinton administration was determining how to handle the emergence of al-Qaeda as a terror threat.

Clinton and his foreign policy staff were criticized for failing to intervene in a serious way to stop the 1994 genocide in which more than 500,000 people were killed, a decision that Clinton would say was the worst mistake of his presidency.

Clinton’s foreign policy staff had to fend off criticism it failed to do more to nab al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden prior to Sept. 11, 2001. According to former ambassador to Sudan, Timothy Carney, when the Sudan offered to help the United States capture bin Laden, Rice and counter-terrorism czar Richard Clarke advised against it. Later, the 9-11 Commission said no credible evidence existed that Sudan would have made good on its offer.

The Administration and Amb. Rice would have us believe that she was just given a set of CIA-approved talking points to parrot-talk on five news shows. Yet would we also believe that Amb. Rice did not attend any security briefings on Benghazi, did not participate in any discussions, did not question the veracity of what she was expected to say. “Neither I nor anyone else in the administration intended to mislead the American people.” Really? We now have word from CNN sources (h/t PowerLine) that Amb. Rice did, in fact, have access to classified documents mentioning al-Quaeda involvement, and now regrets her public comments. Yet she still went on national television claiming a YouTube video.

In one word, judgment. She has none.

Without succumbing to conspiracy theories, one only has to guess there’s something deeper going on here. Undercover gun-running to Syrian rebels? Tyrone Woods was supposedly in Libya to help track down Ghaddafi’s weaponry before it fell into the wrong hands.

Susan Rice. Benghazi. We’re only at the proverbial “tip of the iceberg.”